Navy NCIS: Skyfall
by Might N' Magic
Summary: NCIS Case File: Murder seems obvious when the body of a Navy SEAL crashes through the home of a suburban home. But who would kill a beloved SEAL officer? Chapter 4 finally added. Expect the conclusion in the next week.
1. Landfall

"I'm not going out there."

"Come on honey, you can't lock yourself away in here forever."

Larry Jackson hadn't left his house since finding the body of Max Janson in the woods on the camping trip with his wife. His fear, no matter how irrational, was that he would find dead bodies no matter where he went. Larry thought things were good after the first time. He'd cleaned up his act, become a better person, his life was better for it. Maybe it was even a sign from God that he could have a second chance.

Now he simply felt that death followed him everywhere. To solve this problem, he decided to hole himself up in his house, where death would have to be content to sit outside and wait for him.

"Death is out there Rose! The average person doesn't find ONE dead body in his lifetime, let alone two!"

"You can't let your life be dominated by two unfortunate incidents. Your boss told you to take a vacation, I think we should go out and enjoy it! Let's go to Paris!"

"What for? To spread the death and misery to OTHER nations?"

Rose Jackson gave her husband a wry smile. "Fine, stay here. I'm going to work now."

"Good, good, you'll be safe there."

She rolled her eyes and laughed slightly. Rose wasn't ready to start worrying about her husband. She was determined to find this little fixation of his a simple humorous quirk.

As she walked out the door, she turned to call something out to her husband, another comical jab determined to shake him out of his obsession. As she did so she saw something out of the corner of her eye in the bright sky above her. She first thought it to be a passing plane, but it was growing larger by the moment.

"Larry!" She called out.

He came to the front door quickly. "What Rose?"

"Look!" Rose shouted.

He craned his head to the sky and saw a dark shape growing larger and larger every second.

"Rose, get away from the house!" He screamed.

Larry rushed from the front door and pulled his transfixed wife away from the house just before the shadowy figure crashed into the house with a terrifying roar.

Inside Larry Jackson saw a familiar site, but it was not so familiar to Rose.

"Jesus!" She breathed.

Inside was a badly mangled body laying at angles never meant to be achieved by the human body. Rose shut her eyes and turned away, but Larry simply pulled out his phone, pressed and held in number two on his cell phone and waited for the operator at NCIS headquarters to pick up. Dialing 911 seemed to waste time these days.

It appeared death was in fact unwilling to wait for anyone.

-----

Kate raised an eyebrow when she saw Tony and McGee enter the office in rather strange clothes. McGee was not in his usual loose fitting comfortable suit, and Tony was definitely lacking his usually stylish threads. Both were carrying narrow long bags that looked to be holding something specific.

"Where've you two been?" She asked.

They looked at one another and McGee quickly grumbled, coughed, and ran off to Abby's lab.

"Tony?"

Even he could not manage to crack his usual easy smile. "So McGee and I got a little exercise. Racquetball is a perfectly good way to work out a little."

"Yeah..." She returned.

"And McGee is pretty good, you wouldn't guess it from looking at him but he's a quick little sucker."

"And..."

He could see his ploy was dissolving fast before his eyes and decided to knuckle under and offer up the truth.

"I was invited to a club by an old friend of my former boss. I thought hey, why not? Clubs always have hot girls, and in this case rich hot girls since it was an upscale club. The guy suggested I might want to bring along a guy friend."

Tony had been staring directly at his shoes but now stole a peek at a now intensely interested Kate. His gaze quickly shot away as he continued his story.

"So I checked your day planner and you were busy, and the only other guy I know is McGee."

That earned him a wry sarcastic glare from Kate, which he reveled in for a moment.

"We got there and we noticed that there were a lot of guys there. The only girls we could see actually worked at the club. These guys asked to play a game, so we said sure. We beat them, really easily, which seemed strange since McGee isn't exactly what I'd describe as the athletic type."

As Tony continued to talk, Kate finally got a good look at the racquetball uniform he was wearing. On the right pocket was a symbol which briefly triggered a memory.

"Queen Mary Hills? You and McGee went to Queen Mary Hills?" She exclaimed.

He nodded. "We didn't _know_ about it until after we played the game, then we came straight here afterwards."

Ducky had been watching the whole thing with mild interest while sitting at a nearby desk working on paperwork. He was just about to inquire as to the nature of this club when a voice broke in.

"You took McGee to a _gay athletic club_?!" Abby practically shouted.

"It's a country club! How was I supposed to know they had their own clubs."

Kate was laughing pretty hard by now, loud enough to disturb and bring Gibbs out of his office into the main office. He took one look at Tony and shook his head until his eyes locked on the emblem on Tony's pocket.

"Queen Mary Hills eh Tony? I always thought all that flirting might be a little overcompensation."

"I'm not the one with three failed marriages." Tony grumbled under his breath.

That earned him a sharp piercing look from Gibbs.

"I mean of course I don't, I'm gay afterall!" He laughed as he quickly backed away from Gibbs and hid behind his desk.

Kate shook her head at the whole exchange then looked back down to her desk where she had a pile of work waiting for her. But she was quickly interrupted when Gibbs' phone went off. She heard some grunts and mutters from Gibbs, then the phone snapped shut and-

"We got one, let's go."

-----

At the home of Larry Jackson, the NCIS team was met with a bewildered couple, and a completely devastated house.

"You've got to be kidding, this guy again?" Tony remarked.

"You don't suppose this is just some practical joke?" Ducky offered.

"And what, they demolished their house as a joke? Yeah that's hilarious." Gibbs said, ending the speculation.

They walked past the Jacksons directly into the house. There they found an untouched body. Kate busily began snapping photos of the scene while the rest of the team took up positions around the body and began looking over the details.

"It's not often we get here before the local authorities. Most people aren't even really aware of NCIS, let alone aware enough to call us before they try the civilian police. But I must say, I rather like having a first look at our friend here." Ducky said gesturing towards the body in front of him.

"What have we got?" Gibbs prompted.

"Looks like a paratrooper," Kate started, pointing to the parachute pack on the man's back. "They were probably out on a training exercise and his chute didn't open."

"Not a paratrooper," Tony said, shaking his head. "Look at this."

He gently pushed aside one of the straps on the parachute to reveal the insignia of a Navy SEAL.

"Alright, this isn't going to get us anywhere. Pull his identification, let's get his unit and get to his base. They must have reported him missing by now, the body just fell here a few hours ago." Gibbs said.

"Yeah, a few hours. Kinda makes you wonder why they haven't been combing the area for him. SEALs aren't supposed to leave men behind are they?" Tony ventured.

"He's right." Kate said, catching herself short as if surprised by the statement. She shook it off and continued. "We should have heard from them now, or at least from the local police about searching the area for the body. It should have been radioed in as soon as the other SEALs noticed his chute failed to open."

Gibbs nodded. "Looks like we have some questions for his commanding officer then don't we?"

"Another murder?" Ducky asked.

The rest of the team slowly nodded. "Looks that way Ducky, why?" Kate returned.

"That's all we seem to get lately. And while I appreciate the chance to hone my skills as a professional, I must say I prefer the days when Naval officers were content to pillage and plunder instead of murdering all the time. Whatever happened to the good old cases of elaborate thefts and scheming plots? It's certainly more exciting and less deadly."

Kate shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint you Ducky."

"Oh well, back to the morgue."

-----

They went directly from the scene of the body to the base the SEAL team was based at. They found the SEALs just returning from the exercise, literally just getting off the plane.

"Our victim is Lieutenant James Caufield. Been with this squad for just over a year, been with the Navy for four years now. By every official report he was a competent officer and intelligent respectable man." Kate informed them as they walked over to the plane.

"Competent officers don't screw up on jumps like this." Gibbs responded.

"Let's see what our friends over there have to say about that." Tony added.

Gibbs approached them quickly.

"I'm Agent Gibbs, NCIS. Would you all follow me please?" Gibbs said in a voice that left no impression his words were a request, despite their content.

The SEALs looked at one another and line up behind Gibbs with sullen faces. Gibbs led them into a small conference room just large enough to fit them. The team consisted of twelve men.

"I'm Commander Innis, what can I do for you Agent Gibbs?" The tallest of the men said as he stepped forward.

"Well Commander, you can step back, stay out of my way, and make sure your men comply with our investigation." Gibbs said haughtily.

The Commander seemed ready to balk at that, but nodded and gestured to his men who all nodded their heads at him in turn. Gibbs in turn nodded Tony, Kate and McGee.

"The four of us will be interviewing you all separately for your stories and accounts of what just happened. We'll be asking for specific information on Lieutenant Caufield. As of this moment you are considered to be under oath, and anything you say can be used against you in a military court of law should it be found untrue." Kate announced.

With that, they NCIS team all put in ear pieces to connect them and let them listen in on each others interrogations, then divided the SEALs into groups and took them off to be interviewed. Most of the interviews were the same: Lieutenant Caufield was a great kid, smart, respectable, and an able leader. But there was a general uneasiness in the air.

"How many jumps had you taken with Lieutenant Caufield?" Tony asked Chief Willis.

"About forty." He answered nervously.

"Forty perfect jumps, and all of a sudden he makes a mistake and his chute doesn't open? Does that sound like the Lieutenant Caufield you knew?" Tony pressed.

"No, I'm positive Lieutenant Caufield had his chute perfectly packed. He never made mistakes, and we all looked up to him."

"Then why did his chute malfunction?"

"Things happen." He shrugged as casually as possible.

Across the hall Kate was meeting with Lieutenant Commander Holmes.

"Commander Holmes, what was your relationship with Lieutenant Caufield?" She asked.

He snorted. "Cocky little brat. But he really did know what he was doing. The men looked up to him, always liked his sense of honor." Holmes scoffed.

One room over from the two of them, McGee was interviewing the newest member of the SEAL team, eighteen year old Ensign Bardok.

"That's a statement I'd really like backed up with factual evidence." McGee said sternly.

"I'd think it's rather obvious, it speaks for itself." The young Ensign challenged.

"There is no way the Flash could beat Superman at a footrace."

"Sure he could, Superman was only fast when he was airborne, but the Flash clearly had the advantage on a pure foot race."

"Well," McGee started, ready to refute. "Maybe if he his some kryptonite in Superman's boot, otherwise I really don't see how-"

"MCGEE!" Kate and Gibbs yelled over the ear piece connection. It was so loud McGee ripped the piece out of his ear.

"Yow!" He yelped.

"Something wrong sir?" Bardok asked him.

"No," McGee answered, putting the ear piece back in. "Let's get back to the questions."

The young Ensign nodded nervously.

"What can you tell me about the unit itself? Has anything strange been going on lately?"

"Not since...I mean, no. This is a top notch unit. I'm glad I was placed here. It's hard to get into Commander Innis' team."

"No problems between you or anyone else and Lieutenant Caufield?"

He shook his head. "None. Everyone liked him. The guy really helped out new men like me who felt sorta daunted by being a SEAL. He was a brother in more than just arms."

McGee nodded.

All the interviews were going the same way. No indications of any problems or tensions in the group. The news that came from Abby at her lab was just as disconcerting. Gibbs' phone range just as the NCIS team was gathering back together.

"Hey Gibbs. I went over the parachute pack you guys brought back. I opened it up under a black light and went over it, at first nothing looked wrong. Some of the fabric was ripped from the crash landing, including the deployment cords that are supposed to snap off to deploy the nylon canopy."

"Does it look like anyone sabotaged it? Or is it the Lieutenant's fault?"

"I wondered about that, so I repacked it myself and tested it. It wasn't a problem with the packing. I looked at the cords under a microscope, and while some of them were force snapped, meaning they were ripped in the crash, one of them has saw tooth marks, meaning someone spent some time sawing it off. Even that though doesn't mean foul play, plenty of parachutists saw off parts to make the pack more comfortable. But here's one thing that shouldn't be. The primary and secondary rip cords to deploy the chute were corroded with some sort of chemical. Whoever did it really knew what they were doing too, these cords are specially treated to be anti corrosive. Normal acids wouldn't work, you'd need a special mixture of highly noxious corrosive materials to make this happen."

"So you think it was sabotage?" Gibbs pressed.

"I do now. It looks like it was probably applied just before it was packed. Since the cords are all anti corrosive, it took a lot longer to eat through the cords, and by the time they were pulled, they snapped. Whoever did it really knows their way around parachutes and chemicals."

"Thanks Abs."

He hung up and turned to his team.

"Sabotage." He announced.

"Well you won't get any help from me on who might have done it. Everyone I interviewed loved the guy. Thought he was some cross between a brother and a saint." Tony said.

"Same here. These people would have given Caufield their first born child if he asked for it." Kate agreed.

"McGee?" Gibbs prompted.

"The newest member of their team seemed a little more nervous than I would have thought normal. When I asked him if the unit had had any problems recently, it looked like he had something to say but then thought better of it. Other than that, they all revered Caufield." McGee answered.

"The same all around. Everyone so full of love and understanding." Tony mused.

"Not exactly all around. Commander Holmes seemed to not be Caufield's biggest fan. It sounds like he had some grudging respect, but other than that didn't like him at all." Kate corrected.

"Now that I think of it, something Chief Willis said seemed a little funny. He said that Caufield was a great jumper, they'd made forty jumps with no incidents. Then he said that he was positive that Caufield packed his chute right, and could whatever happened was for another reason."

"What reason is that?" Gibbs asked Tony.

"He said 'things happen'."

"Something is certainly going on here. We need to search Caufield's room. Better search the rooms of the other three you had questions about too."

They all nodded and went off to search the rooms.


	2. Big Questions Tiny Answers

"Relatively normal."

"Same here."

"An abnormal amount of The Flash comics, but other than that it was spit shine normal."

"What's an abnormal amount for you McGee?" Tony poked.

"I wouldn't go throwing the word abnormal around like that if I were you Dinozzo." Gibbs interjected.

The consensus was pretty much the same on all the rooms.

"I thought Caufield's room would shed at least some light on a motive. Beloved figures aren't murdered for no reason." Gibbs thought aloud.

"Maybe we could set Abby loose in there. She has all those gadgets and everything. Five seconds of waving those little things around and I bet she has an answer." Tony suggested.

"He's right. Caufield is a smart guy, maybe the reason he was murdered is right in front of us but it's hidden so in the event of his death we'd find it." Kate agreed.

"Get her down here," Gibbs ordered.

A half hour later Abby was in Caufield's room at the SEAL base, followed by a large train of cases and trunks full of equipment.

"Find us something Abby. Anything at all. Use McGee, Kate and Tony as you like." Gibbs commanded.

Abby's face blossomed into its famous pretty smile speckled with a dash of feral innocence. She beckoned for her three new worker bees to follow her and then they got to work. She certainly left no stone unturned. She used the tried and true search method first, the infamous black light with the windows blacked out. But that revealed nothing, other than a scrupulously cleaned floor that was entirely clear of dust.

"No one has been in this room to clean it for hours. How could the floor be _this_ clean?" Kate questioned.

"So the guy was a neat freak, is that really a big deal?" McGee returned.

"It might be, but let's overlook it for the moment and keep looking for more." Gibbs ended the discussion on cleanliness.

Next Abby moved into more exotic search tools. She brushed and layered every surface in the room with special chemicals to try and preserve fingerprints, which she later removed and put on plastic films for later checking. Tony meanwhile was using a portable x-ray machine to see through the walls and panels of the furniture to locate any hidden stashes to keep evidence. Kate was going over the room with a cathode ray emitter, and McGee was hacking into the laptop sitting on Caufield's desk.

"Why can't they have these things at my doctor's office?" Tony said pointing to the machine he was holding.

"Probably because you don't want to bombard your body with that much x-ray radiation as often as you'd like. That machine works by pounding a surface with x-ray energy to illuminate shadows beyond the visible light spectrum. They are working on similar systems for airport security, but you don't want that thing casually aimed at you for long periods of time." Abby answered.

An hour after they started, they were about ready to give up when Tony spotted something. Staring straight down at the floor, looking through his x-ray scanner he motioned for everyone to come over.

"I think I have something."

He knelt down and knocked on the floor in three places, all sounded normal. But a fourth and fifth knock produced hollow sounds. Tony smiled and jabbed a penknife into the cracks around the floorboards, prying them up. The space that he opened up was a foot deep, and several feet across.

"Nice extra storage space he's keeping here. What is that?" Kate said, pointing to a blinking machine tucked into the space.

Abby nudged her way into the mix and nodded when she saw it.

"It's an air filter." She said, reaching down to shut it off. A humming sound that they hadn't previously realized hearing suddenly died and the room was even quieter. "He ran it under the floor boards and connected it to heating ducts that he blocked off from the central aeration system. Clever. It kept all the dust from accumulating on the ground."

"Why would he do that?" Kate asked.

"Because he's a smart guy," Gibbs answered before Abby could. "He knew a black light would be easy to wave around here, and that anyone would find the seam in the floor where he has this stuff stashed."

"Okay, so what's he hiding in there?" McGee wondered impatiently.

Tony reached into the space and pulled out a small metal box about the size of a piece of paper. He opened it easily, it had no lock. Inside was a single leaf of paper.

"A blank piece of paper?" Kate said incredulously.

Tony turned it over to find it gray on the opposite side.

"Is this some kind of SEAL code? Gray on one side and white on the other?" McGee asked.

"None that I'm familiar with." Gibbs answered. "Abby?"

She peered at it curiously. But she shook her head just as quickly. "I don't know. I'll take it back to the lab with the other stuff and give it a once over with my toys there. But it just looks like a piece of paper."

"Appearances can be deceiving. Give it everything you have." Gibbs told her.

She smiled. "No problem Gibbs."

With that they packed up the equipment and called it a day.

-----

The next day they entered the office to find Abby asleep at her lab desk. They woke her gently and she snapped awake to find Kate, Tony and McGee in front of her, the latter of the group holding a 7-11 cup out to her. She took it gratefully and sipped away until she had the sleep cleared from her eyes.

"You have anything for us?"

The three of them crowded around her like kids on Christmas morning. It was clear the next step in their investigation might very well hinge on the answers she could provide. With no obvious suspects, no motive, and only a clean murder weapon available, they were fast running out of options.

"Of course I do." She said, beaming.

She pulled out the sheet of paper from what looked to them like a scanner and handed it to Tony with a magnifying glass. He held it to the piece of paper, squinted, then shrugged and handed it to Kate.

"You see anything?" Abby asked.

"No..." Tony and Kate answered.

"Good, no reason why you should."

"Abby..." Kate said with a warning tone.

"I used the most powerful microscope I had to see if maybe there was something written on the paper, but maybe it was just too small to read. But I could still only see gray. When I scanned it onto my computer and tried to magnify it there, the computer wouldn't render the image. That got me curious, so I requisitioned a scanning electron microscope to try and take an even closer look. SEMs are a hundred times more powerful, and could read the declaration of independence written on a grain of sand if you could put it there."

"NCIS bought a scanning electron microscope last night just because you asked?" Kate said with some doubt.

"No they didn't, so I visited a friend of mine in the science department at a local university and borrowed theirs. That's when I found this."

She tapped a few keys on her computer and a hazy gray image appeared on the screen. What looked to Tony and Kate like gibberish flowed across the screen in an unending stream.

"What is it?" Tony asked.

"Documents. There's a hundred pages of twelve point font single spaced documents here. And you'll never believe what it says."

"Wait, how did he fit a hundred pages worth of stuff onto one piece of paper? I don't care who you are, you can't write that small." Tony interjected.

"You're write, the human hand could never do that. But a Focused Ion Beam could."

"A what?!" Kate asked with her eyebrows askew.

"Focused Ion Beam milling lasers can draw hundreds of little smiley faces over a human hair. They are incredibly accurate and the beam is microscopic, it only shaves a few microns of material off of what it hits. The words on the page are jammed together without spaces or punctuation and no spaces between the lines."

"Where does a SEAL get something like that?"

"No idea. But that's what did it, and there's your evidence. The fingerprints I pulled are all his, if anyone else has been in the room recently they were careful about it. I'll try and get the words off here and in some readable form over the next couple hours."

"Give us a quick summary. What is it?" Kate asked somewhat excitedly.

"Basically it's a list of parachuting accidents that have happened all over the armed forces. They are all the same parachute and come form the same company, AerialNation. Ironically the chute that killed Caufield wasn't the same ones he claims caused all these other parachuting accidents. But that's what he claims."

"Well there's your motive." Kate said.

"Yeah, but who would gain from stopping him from going public about a scandal that really only hurts AerialNation?" Tony asked.

"Let's find out."

They turned and saw Gibbs standing at the doorway.

"How long have you been standing there?" Tony asked.

"Long enough to know you've been standing around talking too much Dinozzo. We have work to do, let's go."

Tony, Kate, and the silent bringer of 7-11 beverages McGee exited the room with Gibbs standing just inside the door. Just before he turned to leave he looked at Abby and smiled.

"Good work Abs."

"Thanks Gibbs."

-----

The short drive to the SEAL base was not a quiet one.

"I think we need to act like we know more than we do and go after that new kid that just joined up. The other SEALs won't have been able to get him to clam up as well as the old guys. He'll be easiest to crack." McGee jumped right in.

Gibbs looked back at him from the driver's seat and smiled. "Well done McGee, let's see how you handle it."

McGee got a startled look in his eyes. "Who me? Isn't that the sort of thing you or Kate should do?"

"Hey!" Tony said, in a mock hurt tone.

"It's your ball, run with it." Gibbs ordered. "Just don't drop it."

Ten minutes later McGee again alone in a room with Ensign Bardok, again with Kate, Gibbs and Tony in his ear by way of listening device.

"Ensign Bardok, something you said in our last interview troubled me."

"Sir?"

"What exactly is the top ground speed of the Flash?" McGee asked deadly serious.

In the other room Kate hissed into Gibbs' ear off the microphone. "Gibbs!"

"Just wait a minute Kate, let's see where he goes with it."

She nodded but her eyes and tone of voice clearly showed a measure of distrust for the course of action. All eyes turned back to the television screen showing them what was happening in the room with McGee and Bardok.

"Oh I don't know, if you mean the second Flash, as most everyone is referring to when it comes to the DC comics timeline, probably something like seven hundred miles per hour."

"Certainly fast enough to run across water or create a cyclone to save falling people."

"Exactly." Bardok said, settling into a comfortable groove.

"Remember the one episode of Justice League where Batman's plane got shot down and he and Robin had to bail out, but their parachutes tore and Flash had to spin a cyclone to help them down?"

"Sure." His voice wavered slightly at the thought of a parachute failing. "I wish he'd been there yesterday to save Jimmy, I mean, Lieutenant Caufield."

"And all the others who had the same accident in the last couple months?"

"Yeah them too."

Bardok's eyes snapped up to full alertness as soon as the words were out of his mouth, only realizing what he said after it was too late. Kate stood with her mouth open in the other room, Gibbs wore a proud smirk on his face.

"It's alright Ensign. We know all about the accidents with the parachutes, AerialNation, and Caufield's part in the cover up."

Gibbs shook his head now. "Well now's he's stretching it a bit, but let's see where it takes him."

Bardok was sputtering now, trying to answer without giving anything away, but unable to stop the words from pouring out of his mouth. "Wait there a minute! Jimmy wasn't part of any cover up! He's been saying since I got here that we should go public with what happened, that the families of the men who died deserve to know what really happened."

"Then why didn't he?" McGee pressed.

"Because Commander Innis ordered everyone to silence about the whole thing. He said the brass was taking care of the whole thing, and the best we could do was shut up about it. But Jimmy told me a couple weeks ago that the whole thing had been going on too long now, and they weren't doing anything about it."

"Who else did he tell that to?"

"I don't know." He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Jimmy was a great guy you gotta understand that. I never saw him do the wrong thing the entire time we jumped together, he was always right, and always did what he thought was the honorable thing. He would have gone public soon if he hadn't of died in the accident."

There was anger in Bardok's voice now, mixed with bitterness.

"I think that's all I need from you for now Ensign. You can go back to your duties."

"Thank you sir."

With that, Bardork left the room and McGee went to meet with Gibbs and the others.

"Great work McGee." Gibbs said then turned to Kate and Tony. "You two could learn a thing or two from him."

McGee was beaming with pride until he turned to see the withering glares on Tony's and Kate's faces.

"Well, now we have a motive, a murder weapon, and what looks like a nice lead to a suspect. I say its time we paid a visit to AerialNation." Gibbs said.


	3. Stone Walls & Lock Picks

AerialNation was a short drive from the SEAL base. They had set up shop five years earlier close by to cater specifically to the needs of a growing Special Forces command in the United States Armed Forces. They got about what they expected when they arrived. Gibbs strode into the smallish building quickly and in command as he approached the front desk.

"I'm Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS, I need to speak with whoever is in charge, now."

The flustered woman at the desk sputtered a bit then nodded and picked up her phone.

"Maybe we should have called first so they were ready for us." McGee opined.

"McGee, would you really want people who might have something to hide from us to be _that_ ready?" Gibbs returned.

"Oh, I guess not."

Minutes later a man in a well tailored suit walked out of an unmarked door nearby and headed towards them.

"Special Agent Gibbs, I'm Bernard Grove, Manager of Operations here at AerialNation. Please, tell me how I can help you?"

Gibbs smirked at that. "You can open up your files regarding the-" Gibbs paused and opened a file Kate handed him. "Sixteen Eleven Jumpmaster parachute. Including all testing done on them prior to sale, and any problems reported with them."

Grove's face blanched a bit. Kate's eyes focused in on his face and saw him break into a sweat.

"I'm afraid Agent Gibbs that will be quite impossible. Most of our records were destroyed in a fire last year. And even if they weren't those are sealed and restricted."

Gibbs stepped closer to Grove, until he was bare inches from his face.

"I could come back here with a warrant if you make me. Or you can make me happy now, release the records, and I won't make trouble for you."

"He really is a guy you want to make happy." Tony interjected.

Grove paled even more, but held his ground. "I'm sorry, but as I said, our records were mostly destroyed in a fire last year."

"Really? New company like this, started up in the 90's during the tech boom and as of last year you still hadn't backed up your files on computer? Seems a little silly to me." McGee chimed in.

Everyone turned back to look at him, then the NCIS team turned back to glare at a physically squirming Bernard Grove.

"I really don't-"

"Sure would be a shame if this got leaked to the media. They're having a field day with corporate scandals and cover ups." Gibbs cut him off.

"Horrible shame." Tony added with a smile.

Grove gathered his strength and furrowed his brow.

"I'm sorry Agent Gibbs but the matter is closed."

With that he stalked off back through the unmarked door and the desk receptionist asked them to leave.

"Well that didn't go very well," Kate commented.

"It could have gone better, but it wasn't bad." Tony said.

"How do you figure?" She asked.

"Because they acted guilty as all hell that's how. It's just a matter of getting in there before they destroy those records now." Gibbs answered.

"And short of breaking and entering how are we going to do that? Until Abby can sort out that document we got from Caufield's room, we have no legal basis to get a warrant for a search." Kate complained.

"No, we don't, but that doesn't mean it can't be done." Tony said.

"How is that?" Kate asked.

Tony smiled. "Wait and see."

Kate gave him a confused look but Gibbs met Tony's look with a smile of his own and nodded. With that Tony headed off for the car with his cell phone in hand.

-----

Five hours later seven police cars pulled up to AerialNation, closely followed by a SWAT team. Gibbs and Kate watched as they poured into the building with loud shouts and fast movement.

"I'm Detective Mahoney. I need to speak to a Mr. Bernard Grove." A large man who appeared to be in charge said.

Gibbs and Kate watched in amusement as the ever flustered Mr.Grove came rushing out of his unmarked door into the lobby.

"I'm Bernard Grove, what can I do for you?"

"Detective Mahoney." He announced, holding up his badge, indicating he was a member of the local police department. "We have reason to believe a fugitive from a gun related crime is hiding in this building. The crime was perpetrated just down the street, and eye witnesses have indicated this is the direction of the fleeing suspect. We have a warrant to search the grounds of this building and all surrounding buildings."

"Of course Detective. If you will allow my people to escort you around the building we can aid your search and access to rooms."

"Surely," Detective Mahoney agreed. With that he ordered his men to fan out and meet with AerialNation employees to search the building.

All of them did so, except one of the black clad SWAT team members who slipped off into the unmarked door that Grove kept entering and exiting through. He swept into a long hallway with doors periodically lining the wall. The shadowy SWAT team member looked left and right, constantly checking for employees that might spot him. Eventually he came to a door marked "Records Room." He turned the handle and ventured in.

Inside he saw a large room lined with filing cabinets. He rolled his eyes and shrugged at the relatively large task and short amount of time he had to do it in. After ten minutes of fast searching, he found a cabinet marked "Special Projects." He immediately opened the top drawer and within seconds found a file that read "Sixteen Eleven Jumpmaster Testing," which he pulled out and leafed quickly through. Inside he found evidence backing up what Caufield's document accused them of. Failed testing, faulty production techniques and a host of other problems had plagued this model, but still they were ordered to push production after winning a contract through the Navy.

He turned around and saw an old Xerox machine plugged in behind him. Luckily it had paper, and he quickly copied the file. Soon he was putting the file back where it belonged with a large stack of papers jammed into his vest. But just as he was putting the file back where he found it, a name on one of the other files caught his eye.

"LC Holmes," he breathed aloud. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

He didn't know, and didn't have time to check, so he copied the file as well and put it back. The whole ordeal had taken about twenty minutes. Quickly he slipped out of the Records Room and made his was back to the unmarked door, which took him out into the lobby just as Detective Mahoney was gathering his team.

"Well, looks like the suspect isn't in this building, we'll have to check the other buildings around here though, some of which are owned by AerialNation. Your help would again me appreciated Mr. Grove."

"Surely Detective." Grove responded.

The SWAT team moved out of the building first and back to the black painted van. But the man who went off by himself before again moved away from the group over to an unmarked car. He opened the door and was inside before anyone around could notice.

"Well?" Gibbs said.

The man took off his face mask and helmet and smiled. "I got it."

"Good job Tony. Sidestepping of the law included." Kate said in praise.

"Hey, you learn some tricks when you're involved with real cops. I still have some favors that can be called in for times like this."

"What did you find?" Gibbs asked, cutting to the question at hand.

"They are covering up testing results they got from the Jumpmaster. They are producing hundreds of the things with a method full of errors. It's all in a file I copied, we can look at it back at the office and compare it with whatever Abby gets from Caufield's note."

"Anything else?" Gibbs prompted.

"Yeah, one thing. Does LC Holmes mean anything to either of you?"

Gibbs shrugged and shook his head but Kate looked surprised.

"Lieutenant Commander Holmes? He was one of the SEALs on the team that I interviewed when we first got to the base. Why?"

"Really? I found a whole file on him in the Records Room where I got these documents. I didn't get a look at anything in the file, but I did make a copy of it."

"Good work Tony."

Tony beamed with pride.

"Keep this up and you'll be as good as McGee."

His smile died abruptly and Gibbs started the car for the drive back to the office.


	4. Bear Trap

The file didn't turn out to be very big. Inside were several check stubs with dates and amounts of checks presumably made out to Holmes.

"I'd say we have enough here for a search warrant, enough for JAG to lock him away anyway." Kate commented on the file.

"Too circumstantial. We need something solid to nail his ass to the wall. He was too cocky when we interviewed him, and he obviously didn't like Caufield. He's been on AerialNation's payroll the whole time, and they gave him a little extra to cut Caufield off before he could out them to the public." Gibbs said.

"Yeah but how do we prove it Boss?" Tony asked.

Gibbs turned to Abby and smiled.

"You want me to search his bank records? Don't you need a warrant for that?"

"Start searching, take McGee if you want him, just get it done, fast. I'll take care of the warrant."

"Okay Gibbs." She said as she motioned for McGee to join her in her lab. He smiled boyishly and followed her into the lab.

Hours later she had results.

"It wasn't hard to crack his account, he has all his money the school credit union where his kids have theirs. Needless to say the Norfolk Schools Credit Union isn't as secure as the Cayman Islands. He has almost a million dollars in there, far more than any SEAL I know should probably have."

"Do you know where he got it?" Gibbs asked.

"No way of knowing from here. The downside of credit unions like this is that they don't put their check deposits online. There's not way to trace it without actually looking at the paper trail, and that's something I can't get to from here." McGee answered before Abby could. She smiled up at him from where she was sitting.

"Good job you two. As far as I'm concerned that's all we needed to confirm we have our killer." Gibbs said.

"Yeah, but Gibbs, you said yourself that's not enough for JAG to investigate, it's too circumstancial." Kate said.

"Sure, for now. But we've got our killer, now we just need to find a way to prove it."

"Too bad we can't just ask him and get an honest answer." Tony joked.

Everyone gave him the usual eye rolling and scoffing sounds, but Kate perked up at that.

"What if we can, what if we get him to incriminate himself?"

"And how do we do that without him calling it entrapment?" Tony asked.

"It's only entrapment if we induce someone to commit a crime they never had the intention of committing in the first place. It's perfectly legal to open the door for them and let them walk through, we just can't push them through it." Kate explained.

"That's all well and good, but even assuming we could do that, what about AerialNation? If they really paid Holmes to kill Caufield they're guilty of assisted homicide, conspiracy to commit murder and a host of other things involving the actual cover up. They are the bigger fish." Tony complained.

"Then why not kill two birds with one stone. We set them both off, play them against each other, and trap them both. If we get them to incriminate themselves, JAG will have an airtight case against them." Kate offered.

"Sure. What's your plan?" Gibbs asked.

Kate smiled.

-----

"I'm sorry Agent Todd. I really don't have the slightest clue as to what you are talking about."

"Mr. Grove, this may be your last change to tell the truth before a JAG investigation begins. Shortly after that a Senate hearing may be called to investigate your company and any possible cover ups you may be trying to pull off. You might as well tell me the truth now and save yourself the trouble." Kate fired back at the AerialNation executive.

"Really Agent Todd, murder? Assassinations of SEAL officers? Cover ups of faulty equipment? This isn't some fiery novel, this is a business and the United States Navy we're talking about here. Let's show a little respect."

Kate's eyes narrowed and her voice filled with venom. "I believe respect is best shown by trying to find Lieutenant James Caufield's killer. And believe me, I'll stop at nothing to find out just who that person is." She paused for a moment before gathering herself together to lay the first piece of her trap. "So to be clear then, you've never met a Lieutenant Commander Holmes before?"

"That's correct, for the third time, I have never met this man."

"You know nothing about Lieutenant Caufield's death or his plans to go public with your cover up of faulty equipment?"

"Nothing at all, because there is no cover up."

Kate's brow furrowed into her trade mark glare. "And you also know nothing of Lieutenant Caufield passing his information to Ensign Bardok to distribute it in the case of his death?"

He appeared ready to give his automatic denial but was caught short for a moment by what he heard. Slowly though, he grouped together his thoughts and delivered his denial.

"Of course not. Really this is all a big mistake, and I hope it is cleared up quickly."

"So do I Mr. Grove, so do I."

With that she left and headed back to the NCIS office.

-----

"Well?" Gibbs asked upon her return.

"I dropped the bait."

"Tony?"

"His phone is tapped, we have someone watching the pay phones closest to the base. He doesn't have a cell phone." He answered.

The waiting game wouldn't take long to produce results. They went about other business for hours, waiting until night, and then it happened. A call was logged to Holmes' room at eleven fifteen. Holmes picked up the phone.

"Lieutenant Commander Holmes."

"Five minutes," was the breathy answer.

Holmes hung up. Tony was waiting outside his barracks with a long range listening device. Holmes got into his car and drove away from the base with Tony close by. To Tony's surprise, the man didn't pull up to the many pay phones around the base. His path took him also in the opposite direction of AerialNation. It didn't take long for Tony's cell phone to start ringing.

"Where is he DiNozzo?"

"We're a couple minutes outside the base. He's turning off onto a logging road, doesn't even look that old either."

"That's actually pretty smart. Usually when we're tracking suspects like that we expect them to use old abandoned roads like that. No one is in this late at night anyway." Kate commented on the other end of the line.

Five minutes after the phone call had been made, Holmes stopped his car in the parking lot of a lumber mill. Already parked there was black car. Tony pulled off to the side of the logging road, not wanting to risk Holmes seeing him following. He immediately pulled on his headphones and aimed the giant microphone towards the men.

"Looks like you got the wrong man Holmes." An unknown voice said.

Holmes motioned to the man to be quiet and then gestured to the black car. Both of them got in and the door was closed. Tony ripped the headphones off in frustration.

"They got into a car, I can't get anything." Tony said into his cell phone.

He then pulled out a camera with a telephoto lens and snapped off rapid shots of the two men in the back of the car. When he saw Holmes get out and head for his own car, Tony quietly moved his car back onto the logging road and moved out back to NCIS. Kate looked pleased when he got there.

"That was as good as an admission of guilt." She said triumphantly.

"We need more. And in case you didn't notice, the voice on that tape sounds an awful lot like Mr. Grove." Gibbs said.

"It is Grove." Tony confirmed.

Tony yawned, causing Kate to yawn in return. Gibbs glared at both of them and shook his head.

"Alright, go home, come back early in the morning with ideas. If we assume that they made a deal in that car we need to know what it was, and when it'll take place. Until then, Bardok is in danger, and it's because of us." He said pointedly to Kate.

They both nodded to him and left to get some much needed sleep.

-----

Kate came back the next day with a plan. She waited for everyone to assemble then launched it on them.

"That's pretty good." Gibbs admitted.

"It has a lot of holes in it." Tony punched in with.

"Like what?"

"You want to set up a fake meeting with Holmes, alright, which of us is going to do it? He already saw us all during the initial investigation."

Gibbs smiled at that and pressed a button on the phone in the conference room.

"Morgue."

"Ducky, it's Gibbs, you busy?"

"Yes Jethro I'm actually quite busy, what can I do for you?"

"Make yourself unbusy for the rest of the day."

He clicked off the phone and smiled. "Okay we have ourselves a volunteer. What else?"

"What if they have separate meeting places. Maybe that was the meeting place for tonight, what if it's a different meeting place for another night?"

"We follow him. If he heads to a different site, Ducky moves to follow and arrives shortly after him." Kate answered.

"Let's do it. Kate, set it up." Gibbs ordered.

Tony still seemed skeptical of this haphazard plan Kate had come up with, but when Gibbs says "go", he asks "how fast?"

At eleven fifteen that night, they called Holmes' number.

"Lieutenant Commander Holmes." He answered.

"Five minutes." Tony replied with an ever so slight effort to add an accent to his voice.

They both hung up and Tony lifted his night vision binoculars to see if Holmes left his barracks. Sure enough, barely twenty seconds later he was out the door and in his car heading off the base. Tony was hot on his heels, and was delightfully surprised to see him taking the same path to the logging road that Ducky was already past and waiting in the parking lot there.

When Holmes got there, he exited the car and entered the back seat of Ducky's car.

"I told you never to call me two nights in a row! It looks too suspicious to leave the base this late at night as it is!" Holmes hissed out at him.

Kate and Gibbs glanced at each other back at NCIS when they heard the pickup through the microphone Ducky was wearing.

"Something came up." Ducky replied.

"Wait, who are you, you aren't Grove." Holmes said, confused.

"Grove isn't the only one in on this deal. My company has a vested interest in making sure this is the last leak to come from your unit. Unfortunately Mr. Grove couldn't get away for the evening."

"Well whatever," Holmes said impatiently. "What do you want now?"

"We want more from you this time."

"You want me to do more than kill Bardock? Like what?" He scoffed.

Silently the team cheered at his admission.

"We have reason to believe he has the records you couldn't find in Caufield's room. This time you must find those records as well as taking care of Bardock."

"I don't think I'll have time, the jump is in two days, we'll be training during all the time before it."

"Find a way. There's more in store for you if you do."

"Alright. But don't contact me until the mission is over and he's gone!"

"Of course." Ducky said in return.

With that, he exited the car and returned to his own.

"Well I must say that went well." Ducky commented into his microphone.

"Great job Ducky. How'd you like the cloak and dagger side of things?" Kate asked.

"An exciting change of pace really. In fact this whole business with parachutes has got me thinking I might want to try it myself. You know the Chinese are said to of practiced the first uses of a parachute in the 12th century at circus like events. Diagrams were found in Leonardo da Vinci's records as well, thought it appears he never tried for a usable version. But the real explosion in parachuting as an enthusiast's sport came in the late 18th century when..."

"Ducky, this case is about a man who fell to his death, and that makes you excited to jump?" Kate interrupted.

"Well Katherine, I don't plan to be murdered by a fellow parachutist who has been paid to kill me by an evil empire in the parachuting business planning to mislead the public about military equipment failures."

"He has a point." Gibbs agreed.

Kate threw up her hands and walked away as Gibbs lightly chuckled. With the night's mission at an end, Tony and Ducky returned to NCIS to begin planning the next phase.


End file.
